Photo by Eric Parsons

Indira Kaljo will likely play at a Division I school in the fall after helping Ventura College reach the Great Eight.

She may have been a freshman at Utah State, but Indira Kaljo felt like she was in a foreign country.

Unhappy with everything about her collegiate experience, she phoned her friend and former club basketball teammate, Eja Wong, who quickly ran down the list of reasons why they should be reunited at Ventura College.

A new and especially significant reason why Kaljo would transition well to Ventura became apparent in her first call to head coach Ned Mircetic.

Both refugees of the former Yugoslavia as 4-year-olds, they could speak their native language to each other.

"When I talk to him, it's like I've known him for years," said Kaljo. "It's crazy. He'll open up his mouth and I know what he's about to say."

Mircetic, a Serbo-Croatian born in Belgrade, escaped the oppressive communist regime to Italy in 1958. Kaljo, a Bosnian born in Sarajevo, escaped the war in the Balkans to Germany in 1993.

About 50 and 15 years later, respectively, they were player and coach as the Ventura College women's basketball reached the Great Eight for the first time in five years.

"It's the first time in my career I was able to speak my native language with a player," said Mircetic. "Usually, I'm with family and friends when I speak my native language."

This season, the language of the former Yugoslavia (Mircetic calls it "Serbo-Croatian," Kaljo calls it "Bosnian") was used for secret on-court strategy.

"When we talk Bosnian," said Kaljo, "I want to tell him something that I don't want other people to hear."

Mircetic even used their native language to deliver at least one particularly pointed in-game critique.

"It was the first thing that came to my mind," said Mircetic.

Connecting quickly with the coach and the program, Kaljo, The Star's Female Athlete of the Winter Season, averaged 16.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game to earn All-Western State Conference North, second-team All-State and honorable mention All-America honors.

"I had an amazing year," said Kaljo. "The experiences that I had with coach alone and learning from him, being able to be coached by him.

"If I become a coach, I hope I'll be half the coach he is."

It was her consistency that truly made her great. Kaljo scored nine points in the opener and followed by scoring in double figures for the remaining 34 games.

She averaged 16.6 points, yet her season high was only 23 points.

"That's incredible," said Mircetic. "What made her the great player wasn't that single explosive game, it was the consistency and the dependability that is Indira."

When planning for the upcoming season Mircetic penciled the incoming transfer as a one-dimensional, catch-and-shoot player.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

"After a short while in practice, I realized she was much more offensively," said Mircetic.

Yet the biggest surprise came on the other end of the court.

"For someone who has spent her whole life shooting and scoring, her willingness to be a better defensive player and to work really hard on her defensive skills made me extremely happy," said Mircetic.

Kaljo guarded some of the state's best players, including Orange Coast's Courtney Ford, Moorpark's Tiffany Hurd and Mount San Antonio's Jazlyn Davis, the Southern California Player of the Year.

"She did a heck of a job," said Mircetic. "She turned out to be much more of a player than I thought she would be. Most of it was her willingness to work.

"It's a real big deal when someone who is good wants to get better."

Perhaps that is why Kaljo is being recruited by a diverse group of NCAA Division I programs, including Washington, Santa Clara, Cornell, Tulane and San Jose State.